Derek (derekbackus)

I’m a self-taught programmer that has created multiple “shareware” applications in the past… some that were hugely successful and some that were flops. I wrote a program called CMPQwk that was the second e-mail & forum reading program that I know of for Windows. It would call up a BBS on the telephone and download e-mail and forum messages for reading offline — this was before the World Wide Web… BBSes were passing newsgroups around the internet. I’m an obsessive programmer that sometimes stays up into the early morning hours because I just have to get something working and can’t seem to sleep if I don’t.

In my free time, I own one business, KiwiMill that makes custom scale models and am part owner of another business, CLAD Industries that fabricates sheet metal parts for various industries around the Rochester, NY area.

I’ve got a wonderful wife that is very understanding and tolerant of my CLAP addiction. My two boys enjoy helping me, but after an hour or so, get sick of soldering, hot gluing, electrical taping, etc. But I’ve gotten them excited enough so that last year each of them sequenced a song for our Christmas show. Hopefully I can get them obsessed too and keep them off the mean streets of Penfield!

Darren (gizmohd)

I’ve been around technology for a long time… I’ve actually had a very interesting career path, I’m a US Navy Veteran, I was a Radio Broadcaster (DJ) in New Mexico for five years. And I’ve been a full time developer for over ten years. I wrote my first piece of code on a brand new Apple ][, and the first business computer I used back in the day was the IBM System 32.

I’ve got a wonderful woman that tolerates my obsession passion with writing software and now lights. I’ve been talking about doing it for years now, but December 2012, after setting up my static display I made the decision that I would go ahead and do something different next year. I participated in a few group buys on DIYC, have spent more money this year on blinky flashy items than I probably should have. But in the end, I’m doing this for my three kids and our neighborhood that desperately needs some livening up. I ended up on this project because after exploring all the paid and free sequencing options out there, I saw a diamond in the rough. Like everyone else on this team, my desire is to make Vixen 3 the premier sequencing software that offers features previously only found in costly commercial applications.

I have been doing some form of code development for over 10 years. Contributing to the development of Vixen is something I do in my spare time, as a user with the ability to write code as well, I mainly focus on small improvements and usable features that would benefit the majority of Vixen users. My contributions range from very minor fixes and improvements, to those which have a larger impact and direct use by the end users.